May 22nd, 1998

Friday May 22nd, 1998
No Game
Gas: Deposit, NY $8.75
Lodging: Hartwick Seminary, NY

After leaving the hustle and bustle of New York City behind, it was on to upstate New York to visit the Baseball Hall of Fame.  It was amazing to see how dramatically different New York City and the rest of New York really are.

As I stated in a previous post, we found early on in that our California plates made us marked cars and our goal was not to get any speeding tickets while on this trip.  We usually set our cruise control at whatever the local speed limit was and enjoyed our drive (Not to mention really good gas mileage).In Kansas we had been followed by a State Trooper for about 5 miles, just waiting for us to speed.  He kept ducking in behind us and then would speed up next to us the whole time, but we just kept our cruise control on and kept looking forward.  Well, we actually got stopped in New York.  As we were driving along a deserted state highway, we approached an overpass.  From a ways away, we could see that there was a cop on top of the bridge and suddenly we realized he was using his radar gun to nail people.  The moment this occurs, you adrenaline automatically skyrockets and begin to panic.  But then we realized we had nothing to worry about because we had set our cruise control and we were not speeding.  After we passed him under the overpass, we looked in our rear view mirror and saw about 10 State Troopers lined up ready to get the word from their buddy who was speeding.  All of sudden, one of the State Troopers peels out, turns on his lights, and gets behind us.  We can't believe it, but we pull over.  After we get over to the side, he again pulls out and starts heading down the highway.  So now we are just sitting there, no cop anymore, and we really are unsure what the rules are here.  We waited for about 5 minutes but nobody ever came back and finally decided we would be okay to leave.  As we pulled out, we saw another car pulled over: a white Honda Civic.  What we figured happened is the cop on the bridge told the other cops to pull over a white Honda Civic.  He saw us and pulled us over but realized himself or got another call that we were the wrong Civic.  Our adrenaline was running for awhile after that, but that was the closest the whole trip we got to getting a ticket.

The highlight of the day of course was the National Baseball hall of Fame.  We arrived there in the early afternoon.  Unfortunately, we could only spend the afternoon there.  We saw what we wanted to see, but one could spend a few days in there before you would really feel like you've seen everything.  After the museum closed, we headed over to Doubleday Field, considered the birthplace of baseball (although recent research would suggest this is not true) We had pizza at the local Pizza Hut and then headed to our campground.  Cooperstown is really a beautiful town and I would love to spend more time there.  It's the kind of place you imagine Norman Rockwall thinking about when he was creating his paintings of Americana.

We got back to our campground and this is where the big decision came.  Who would sleep where.  We could only fit my two person tent in the trunk.  We tried to fit the Snook's 4 person tent, but it wouldn't fit with all of the luggage.  So we went with our two person tent.  That meant two could sleep in the tent and the other two would sleep in the car.  We gave the girls first choose and after seeing that there was a threat of rain, and the number of roots that were under the tent, they decided the car was a better choice.  I think they reconsidered that decision in the morning when they woke up sore and stiff and Brian and I woke up feeling great.